All-American Girl Read online

  Middle child (a.k.a. me): Lost in the shuffle. Never gets what she wants. Kid most likely to end up a teen runaway, living on leftover Big Macs scrounged from Dumpsters behind the local McDonald’s for weeks before anyone even notices she is gone.

  Story of my life.

  Although if you think about it, the fact that I am left-handed indicates that I was probably, at one time, a twin. According to this article I read in the dentist’s office, anyway. There’s this theory that most lefties actually started out as one in a pair of twins. One out of every ten pregnancies starts out as twins. One out of every ten people is left-handed.

  You do the math.

  For a while I thought my mom had never told me about my dead twin to spare my feelings. But then I read on the Internet that in seventy percent of pregnancies that begin as twins, one of the babies disappears. Just like that. Poof. This is called vanishing twin syndrome, and generally the mothers don’t ever even realize that they were carrying two babies instead of just one because the other one gets lost so early in the pregnancy.

  Not that any of this really matters. Because even if my twin had survived, I’d still be the middle child. I’d just have someone else to share the burden with. And maybe to have talked me out of taking German.

  “Well,” I said, dropping my gaze from my reflection and scowling instead at the place mat beneath my elbows. “What am I supposed to do now? Nobody ever said anything to me about not adding things in school when we had art. They let me add things all I wanted.”

  Jack snorted. “School,” he said. “Yeah, right.”

  Jack was having an ongoing and extremely bitter feud with our school’s administrative offices over some paintings he’d entered in an art show at the mall. Mr. Esposito, the principal of Adams Prep, where Jack and Lucy and I go, didn’t approve of Jack’s entering those paintings in Adams Prep’s name—he never even saw them. So when they were accepted, he was peeved, because the subject matter of the paintings wasn’t what he considered “Adams Prep” quality. The paintings were all of baseball-hatted teens slouching around outside a 7-Eleven. They were titled Studies in Baditude, Numbers One Through Three, though at a recent board of trustees meeting one irate parent called them Studies in Slackitude.

  The Impressionists, I often remind Jack when he is feeling down about this, weren’t appreciated in their day, either.

  In any case, there is no love lost between Jack and the John Adams Preparatory School administration. In truth, were it not for the fact that Jack’s parents are major contributors to the school’s alumni fund, Jack probably would have been expelled a long time ago.

  “You’ve just got to find a way to fight this Susan Boone person,” Jack said. “I mean, before she drives out every creative thought in your head. You have got to draw what is in your heart, Sam. Otherwise, what is the point?”

  “I thought,” Lucy said in a bored voice as she flipped a page in her magazine, “that you’re supposed to draw what you know.”

  “It’s write what you know.” Rebecca, down at the opposite end of the table from me, looked up from her laptop. “And draw what you see. Everyone knows that.”

  Jack looked at me triumphantly. “You see?” he said. “You see how insidious it is, this thing? It’s even seeped into the consciousness of little eleven-year-old girls.”

  Rebecca shot him an aggravated look. Rebecca has always been fully on my parents’ side on the whole issue of Jack.

  “Hey,” she said. “I am not little.”

  Jack ignored her. “Where would we be if Picasso had only drawn what he saw?” Jack wanted to know. “Or Pollock? Or Miró?” He shook his head. “You stay true to your beliefs, Sam. You draw from your heart. If your heart says put in a pineapple, then you put in a pineapple. Don’t let the establishment tell you what to do. Don’t let others dictate how—and what—you draw.”

  I don’t know how he does it, but somehow, Jack always says the right thing. Always.

  “So are you going to quit?” Catherine, calling me later that evening to discuss our bio assignment, wanted to know. Our bio assignment was to watch a documentary on the Learning Channel about people who have body dysmorphic disorder. These are people who, like Michael Jackson, think they are horribly disfigured, when in reality they are not. For instance, one man hated his nose so much he slit it open with a knife, pulled out his own nasal cartilage, and stuck a chicken bone in there.

  Which just goes to show, no matter how bad you think something might be, it could always be much, much worse.

  “I don’t know,” I said in response to Catherine’s question. We had already fully discussed the whole chicken bone thing. “I want to. That class is filled with a bunch of freaks.”

  “Yeah,” Catherine said. “But you told me there was one cute guy.”

  I thought about familiar-looking David, his Save Ferris T-shirt, his big hands and feet, and his liking my boots.

  And the way he had seen me totally and utterly crushed, like an ant, in front of him by Susan Boone.

  “He’s cute,” I admitted. “But not as cute as Jack.”

  “Who is?” Catherine asked with a sigh. “Except maybe for Heath.”

  So, so true.

  “Will your mom let you quit?” Catherine wanted to know. “I mean, isn’t this supposed to be kind of a punishment for the C-minus in German thing? Maybe you aren’t supposed to like it.”

  “I think it’s supposed to be a learning experience for me,” I said. “You know, like how Debbie Kinley’s parents sent her to Outward Bound after she drank all that vodka at that party at Rodd Muckinfuss’s house? Art lessons are supposed to be like my Outward Bound.”

  “Then you can’t quit,” Catherine said. “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’ll figure something out,” I said.

  Actually, I already had.

  Top ten reasons I would make a better girlfriend for Jack than my sister Lucy:

  10. My love for and appreciation of art. Lucy doesn’t know anything about art. To her, art is what they made us do with pipe cleaners that summer we both went to Girl Scout camp.

  9. Having the soul of an artist, I am better equipped to understand and handle Jack’s mood swings. Lucy just asks him if he is over himself yet.

  8. I would never demand, as Lucy does, that Jack take me to whatever asinine teen gross-out movie is currently popular with the sixteen-to-twenty-four crowd. I would understand that a soul as sensitive as Jack’s needs sustenance in the form of independent art films, or perhaps the occasional foreign movie with subtitles.

  And by that I am not referring to Jackie Chan.

  7. Ditto the stupid books Lucy makes Jack read. Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus is not appropriate reading material for a guy like Jack. The Virgin and the Gypsy by D.H. Lawrence would do far more to stimulate Jack’s already brilliant mind than any of Lucy’s pathetic self-help manuals. Although I have never actually read The Virgin and the Gypsy. Still, it sounds like a book that Jack and I could really get into. For instance, we could take turns reading it out loud on a blanket in the park, which is something artists always do in movies. Just as soon as I am done re-reading Fight Club, I will give The V. and the G. a try to make sure it is really as intellectual as it sounds.

  6. On Jack’s birthday, I would not give him joke boxer shorts with Tweety Bird on them, the way Lucy did last year. I would find something highly personal and romantic to give him, such as sable paintbrushes or perhaps a leather-bound copy of Romeo and Juliet or one of Gwen Stefani’s wristbands or something like that.

  5. If Jack were ever late to pick me up for a date, I would not yell at him the way Lucy does. I would understand that artists cannot be held to pedestrian constraints like time.

  4. I would never make Jack go to the mall with me. If I ever went to the mall, which I don’t. Instead, Jack and I would go to museums, and I am not talking about the Aeronautical and Space Museum, which everyone goes to, or the Smithsonian to see Dorothy’s stupid ruby
slippers, either, but actual art museums, with actual art, such as the Hirschorn. Perhaps we could even take drawing pads with us and sit back to back on those couches and sketch our favorite paintings, and people would come up and look at what we were drawing and offer to buy the sketches, and we would say no because we would want to treasure the drawings forever as symbols of our great love for one another.

  3. If Jack and I ever got married, I would not insist on a massive church wedding with a country club reception, the way I know Lucy would. Jack and I would be married barefoot in the woods near Walden Pond, where so many artistic souls have gone to receive succor.

  And for our honeymoon, instead of a Sandals in Jamaica, or wherever, we would fully go to Paris and live in a garret.

  2. When Jack came over to visit me, I would never read a magazine while he sat at our kitchen table eating doughnuts. I would engage him in friendly but spirited and intellectual conversations about art and literature.

  And the number-one reason I would be a better girlfriend for Jack than Lucy:

  1. I would give him the loving support he so desperately needs, since I understand what it is like to be tortured by the burden of one’s genius.

  5

  Fortunately, it was raining on Thursday when Theresa drove me to Susan Boone’s studio. That meant that the chances of her finding a parking space, scrounging around the backseat for an umbrella, getting out of the car, and walking me all the way to the studio door were exactly nil.

  Instead, she stopped in the middle of Connecticut Avenue—causing all the cars behind her to honk—and went, “If you are not out here at exactly five thirty, I will hunt you down. Do you hear me? Hunt you down like an animal.”

  “Fine,” I said, undoing my seat belt.

  “I mean it, Miss Samantha,” Theresa said. “Five thirty on the dot. Or I will double-park and you will have to pay the impound fees if the station wagon gets towed.”

  “Whatever,” I said, and stepped out into the pouring rain. “See you.”

  Then I ran for the door to the studio.

  Only I didn’t, of course, go up that narrow stairway. Well, really, how could I? I mean, I had to fight the system, right?

  Besides, it wasn’t like I hadn’t completely humiliated myself in there the day before yesterday. Was I really just going to go waltzing back in like nothing had happened?

  The answer, of course, was no. No, I was not.

  What I did instead was, I waited about a minute inside the little foyer, with rainwater dripping off the hood of my Gore-Tex parka. While I was in there, I tried not to feel too guilty. I knew I was taking a stand, and all, by boycotting Susan Boone. I mean, I was showing that I was fully on the side of art rebels everywhere.

  But my parents were paying a lot of money for these art lessons. I had heard my father grousing that they cost almost as much per month as the animal behaviorist. Susan Boone, it turned out, was kind of famous. Just what she was famous for, I didn’t know, but apparently, she charged a bundle for her art tutelage.

  So even though I was fighting the system, I didn’t feel too good, knowing I was wasting my parents’ hard-earned money.

  But if you think about it, I am actually the cheapest kid Mom and Dad have. I mean, they spend a small fortune on Lucy every month. She is always needing new clothes, new pom-poms, new orthodontia, new dermatological aids, whatever, in order to maintain her image as one of Adams Prep’s beautiful people.

  And Rebecca, my God, the lab fees alone at Horizon pretty much equal the gross national product of a small underdeveloped nation.

  And me? How much do Mom and Dad spend on me every month? Well, up until I got busted for the celebrity drawing thing, nothing, besides tuition. I mean, I’m supposed to wear my sister’s hand-me-down bras, right? And I didn’t even need new clothes this year: I just applied black Rit to last semester’s clothes, and voilà! A whole new wardrobe.

  Really, as children go, I am a major bargain. I don’t even eat that much, either, seeing as how I hate almost all food except hamburgers, the Bread Lady’s baguettes, and dessert.

  So I shouldn’t have even felt guilty about ditching art class. Not really.

  But as I stood there, the familiar scent of turpentine washed over me, and I could hear, way up at the top of the stairs, the faint sound of classical music, and the occasional squawk from Joe the crow. I was suddenly filled with a strange longing to climb those stairs, go to my bench, sit down, and draw.

  But then I remembered the humiliation I had endured the last time I’d been in that room. And in front of that David guy, too! I mean, yeah, he wasn’t as cute as Jack, or anything. But he was still a guy! A guy who liked Save Ferris! And who had said he liked my boots!

  Okay, no way was I going up those stairs. I was taking a stand. A stand against the system.

  Instead, I waited in the vestibule, praying nobody would come in while I was huddled there and say, “Oh, hi, Sam. Aren’t you coming upstairs?”

  As if anybody there would even remember my name. Except possibly Susan Boone.

  But nobody came in. When two minutes were up, I cautiously opened the door and looked out at the rain-soaked street.

  Theresa and the station wagon were gone. It was safe. I could come out.

  The first place I went was Capitol Cookies. Well, how could I not? It looked so warm and inviting, what with the rain and all, and I happened to have a dollar sixty-eight in my pocket, exactly as much as a Congressional Chocolate Chunk. The cookie they handed me was still warm from the oven, too. I slipped it into the pocket of my black Gore-Tex coat. They don’t allow food in Static, where I was going next.

  They weren’t playing Garbage there that afternoon. They were playing the Donnas. Not ska, but perfectly acceptable. I went over to where they had some headphones plugged into the wall so people could sample the CDs they were thinking about buying. I spent a nice half hour or so listening to the Less Than Jake CD I’d wanted but couldn’t afford now that my mom had seen to it that my funding for such items was shut off.

  As I listened, I snuck bits of cookie from my pocket into my mouth and told myself that what I was doing wasn’t all that wrong. Fighting the system, I mean. Besides, look at Catherine: for years her parents have been forcing her to go to Sunday school while they attend mass. Since there is, like, a two-year age difference between Catherine and each of her brothers, all three of them were in different religion classes, so she never knew until this year that Marco and Javier, after their mom dropped them all off, were waving good-bye and then ducking around the corner to Beltway Billiards. She only found out when her class let out early one day, and she went to look around for her brothers, and they were nowhere to be seen.

  So basically for years Catherine’s been sitting there, listening to her religion teachers tell her to resist temptation, etc., while it turns out the whole time her brothers—and pretty much all the rest of the cool kids who go to her church—have been next door, getting the high score on Super Mario.

  So what does Catherine do now? She waves good-bye to her mom just like Marco and Javier, and then she, too, goes to Beltway Billiards—and works on her geometry homework in the glow of Delta Force.

  And does she feel bad about it? No. Why not? Because she says if the Lord really is all-forgiving, like they taught her in Sunday school, He will understand that she really does need the extra study time or she will flunk geometry and never get into a good college and make a success of herself.

  So why should I feel bad about skipping my drawing lesson? I mean, it is only a drawing lesson. Catherine, on the other hand, is skipping out on God.

  Surely my parents, in the unlikely event that they find out what I’ve done, will understand that I was merely trying to preserve my integrity as an artist. Of course they will understand this. Probably. Maybe. On a good day, anyway, when there haven’t been any PCBs found in some Midwestern town’s water supply, or too many plunges in the North African economy.

  If anybody at Static
thought it was strange that this fifteen-year-old redheaded girl, dressed in black from head to toe, was hanging around for two hours, sampling CDs but not buying any, they didn’t say anything about it to me. The chick behind the counter, who had the kind of spiky black hair I’ve always wanted but have never had the guts to get, was too busy flirting with one of the other workers, a guy in plaid pants and a Le Tigre T-shirt, to pay any attention to me.

  The other customers were ignoring me, too. Most of them looked like college students wasting time between classes. Some of them might have been in high school. One of them was a kind of old guy, like in his thirties, wearing army clothes and carrying a duffel bag. For a while he was hanging out by the headphones near me, listening to Billy Joel. I was surprised that a place like Static even had any Billy Joel, but they did. This guy kept listening to “Uptown Girl” over and over. My dad is actually a Billy Joel fan—he plays it all the time in the car, which makes driving with him mad fun, let me tell you—but even he is way over “Uptown Girl.”

  My cookie was gone about midway through the Spitvalves’ second album. I reached into my pocket and found nothing but crumbs. I thought about going over to Capitol Cookies to get another, but then I remembered I was broke. Besides, by that time it was almost five thirty. I had to go outside and wait for Theresa to pick me up.

  I put my hood up and walked out into the rain. It wasn’t the steady downpour it had been when I’d arrived, but I figured the hood would keep anybody coming out of the Susan Boone Art Studio from recognizing me and being all, “Hey, where were you, anyway?”

  As if any of them would have missed me.

  It had gotten dark outside while I’d been in the record store. All the cars going by had their headlights on. And there were a lot more of them than before, because it was rush hour and everyone was trying to get home to be with their loved ones. Or maybe just to watch Friends. Whatever.